Reach students through new college tour video network

Each year, 20+ million high school students research colleges online and over 15 million of them enroll in college as first year undergraduates (Source: National Center for Education Statistics).  Campus Media Group has partnered with YOUniversityTV Video Network to give national brands a new way to reach this group through online video advertising.

YOUniversityTV

About:

YOUniversityTV Video Network, is a leading syndicated college video platform, where teens and young adults can watch hundreds of campus video tours of the top colleges and universities in the U.S. These original videos are created by YOUniversityTV for colleges and can be viewed on YOUniversityTV.com and other popular sites like Cappex.com, Scholarships.com, and Collegeprowler.com.

With advertisers not having the ability to advertise directly on college websites to reach this elusive audience, YOUniversityTV offers a platform to target this audience through some of the most popular education sites visited by teens today.

Watch a video here to see for yourself how great these videos are.

Quick Facts:

• Monthly video impressions – 1,200,000  (Projected to be over 10 million monthly by year-end)
• Video views per unique visitor – 3
• Average time watched per video – 4:35
• High school teens (aged 16-19) make up primary visitor  (55% Female, 45% Male)
• Other secondary visitors include community college students looking for transfer opportunities
• 64% are first time viewers, and 36% are returning viewers
• 29% have Household Incomes between $60,000 and $100,000

Advertising & Targeting:

Advertisers can capture this captive teen audience through highly targeted pre-roll, mid-roll and lower-third video advertising. National and regional targeting is available. Contact Campus Media Group here for rates, or email info[at]campusmediagroup.com.

Retail Marketing & Fashion with Polyvore

We’ve been helping our clients expand their presence with social media sites like Facebook. Through this, we have come across some very cool platforms, applications, and add-ons. One of the sites we like for the retail world is Polyvore.com. Clothing retailers and brands should be learning all they can about them and how to incorporate them into your site and social networking strategies. Look at their app for Facebook.

Polyvore defines themselves this way:

Express your style.

Mix & match products from your favorite stores.

Shop looks created by the web’s largest fashion community.

This is what it looks like –

She’s walking down the street, Blind to every eye she meets.. by maya3857 featuring Oasis bags

What does the site do? Polyvore allows people to create “sets” of clothes from different brands. The user/designer of the set is then able to add the set to their blog, share the set with the Polyvore community, buy the products in the set, and in the end, develop followers of the designers of the sets. It’s like having a virtual changing room with all of your favorite clothes from different designers in one place allowing you to mix and match.

Who should be on the site? Clothing brands of all kinds

Why should you be there? Thought leaders in fashion are engaging in the site. It’s primarily women right now.

Who develops the sets? Individual fashion enthusiasts and brands alike.

How to get involved? Contact us and we can help you out.  You can also sign up via their site.

Say goodbye to the traditional textbook

I remember donating plasma to help pay for my college textbooks. I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t come close to covering it these days. According to U.S. PIRG, students spend an average of $900 a year on textbooks. Students are tired of being strong-armed at the bookstore, and plenty of companies are helping to do something about it. The unnecessary rise in costs for textbooks and the traditionally slow- moving textbook industry are being tested by alternative models for textbook distribution and consumption. No one is totally sure what method will stick, but the ones that do are likely to make wheel barrows full of money and relieve a lot of pressure for students and parents.

Here are some companies that are experimenting with new ways to deliver textbook and other educational content and helping to lower the cost of higher education:

Chegg www.chegg.com – Allows students to rent their book for class at a discount of more that 50% and have it delivered to their door. Students can rent books for the semester and ship them back for free when they are done. There is also an option for students to extend their rental period or buy the book should they choose to do so. Oh, and Chegg plants a tree for every book rented.

CourseSmart www.coursesmart.com – Offers digital versions of traditional textbooks from some of the major publishers in the industry such as: McGraw Hill, Pearson, and Wiley. These materials are viewable online or can be downloaded. The book prices are reduced significantly from the printed versions found in the campus bookstore. Students using this service tout the joy of not having to lug around heavy books for class anymore.

Textbook Media www.textbookmedia.com – Works directly with publishers and authors to offer their textbooks and study guides online through a web-based book reader. The books are adopted by professors and assigned to their students for the semester. The books are offered free to students through sponsorships (think PBS underwriting) from national brands that want to help lower the cost of education. Paid upgrades with no advertising are also available. (In full disclosure, Campus Media works closely with this company to create custom sponsorships for national brands.)

Aplia www.aplia.com – A software brand owned by one of the country’s largest textbook publishers (Cengage) has put its money behind engaging students through online homework assignments, problem sets, tutorials, and interactive market experiences to complement textbook content. Paid access (about $60) to these online exercises provides instant feedback to the student and professors to better understand what is resonating with students and what isn’t. The real-world applications help students deepen their understanding of concepts covered in the textbook.

Flat World Knowledge www.flatworldknowledge.com – An open-source textbook provider that provides online textbooks in a reader to students free of charge. Professors are able to customize the book by rearranging chapters, removing or adding text, and other customization. Students pay for premium PDF upgrades for printing, audio files and interactive web quizzes. Earlier this year, Flat World Knowledge received $8 million in Series A funding to help grow its offerings.

Virtually Educated

People often say that your college years are the best years of your life. After all, it’s not just about the education, it’s about the lifestyle. It’s living in the dorms your freshman year (and undoubtedly have the strangest person on campus as your roommate). It’s about tailgating and sporting events. It’s about late night cramming sessions and the hours spent in the stacks. It’s about fraternities and sororities.  It’s about lectures. It’s about semesters abroad. It’s about lugging your books around campus. It’s about spring breaks and road trips. It’s about bar hopping. It’s about learning your limits and setting your priorities. It’s about learning lessons that can’t be taught from a text book.  It’s about growing up.

However, times are changing. Due to cost effectiveness and flexibility web based learning is the educational craze that is sweeping the nation.  Last year 600,000 students completed all of their coursework online. In addition, it seems, the information super highway is aiming to offer students the lifestyle (via virtual reality) as well. Second Life (one of many online virtual worlds) offers their student users (“Residents”) more than just education. Students (via their avatar) are able to go to virtual campuses, attend conferences, register for online classes, and even study abroad (all while sitting in the comfort of their living room or perhaps even their favorite Java Bean). Last week the virtual world kicked it up yet another notch and hosted their first commencement ceremony, for 40 or so online students graduating from Bryant & Stratton College (which the students attended through Second Life).

This all raises the question, if you are 18-24 and you don’t take the traditional route (full time student living on campus), are you missing out? Or is it, virtually the same?